


"VOYAGE" - Book 1, Part 1

by elirin



Series: The Pinco Sitz Blade [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 04:47:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17196806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elirin/pseuds/elirin
Summary: Four heroes journey to Nidaria to deliver a book of love poems. On their way, they must stop for food, risking their lives in unfamiliar space.





	1. Earth

Earth looked out through the place on her space dragon where her skin was so stretched you could start to see space. They were travelling through space, past tons of stars and space, to get to Nidaria where their friend Fyre’s friend lived, Sidan. It was a space dragon, who our heroes simply call Dragon; and there was Fate, bestowed with the power of seeing into the future, particularly in moments of desperation; Creation with the power of creating material – food, medicine, weapons, whatever he can imagine, to whatever extent his strength allows him; and of course Earth, defender of Homeworld, famed for her honesty, courage, and strength, across East Affen. But now our heroes rest, flying through space inside Dragon’s mouth to at last arrive on Nidaria. 

And now Earth stargazes, and Fate and Creation sleep together in the dark back throat of Dragon where Dragon’s fat and thick skin can shield them from the constant sound of her breath, which sounded like a distant earthquake or volcano eruption. Outside Dragon, Earth can see the far reaches of space – colorful stars with sharp angles and planets rolling around and a sprawling belt of cosmic debris spread over lightyears. And in the foreground a constant stream of space dust and pebble flows by, and they look warm red from the light cast out from Dragon’s fiery neck. 

“It’s amazing how grounded I feel,” Earth speaks softly to no one (but Dragon is listening), “so far from home, out here in space. I feel like here is also my home. I don’t even feel impatient to reach Nidaria. The stars are so beautiful, I could sit here forever, watching them.” 

Dragon purred in agreement and Earth stared out distantly. 

“I mean, I do want to go home obviously. I miss Fyre and the city, and the woods and the mountains in Mabela, and Star and Fobe and all my friends. And Homeworld will always be my home. But I love travelling still, as much as I love sitting outside back home looking up at the stars and listening to my home. I almost don’t feel like I’m missing on anything, like Dragon’s belly and just knowing my best friends are gonna wake up and we can be together, that’s also my home.” 

Time slipped by and Earth gazed and the belts of stars and ringed planets in the distance inched past her. Our three heroes have lost all sense of time, moments blend through mornings into days and weeks. Without Homeworld’s sun, they could only judge time with their sleep schedules. But still, time was elusive, and now the three were starting to forget when they left, and how long they were told it would take. Surely they’ve left no more than two weeks ago – or maybe three. Or perhaps two days – but that’s not likely, because they can no longer see Homeworld from Dragon, and they stopped at Ossis for food, which Fyre told them was four days from Homeworld. But fortunately for Earth, time does not concern her now. And it seems Earth, her eyes drowsy with a small smile, has found a home in space’s timelessness. 

“I guess to some degree, I’m glad to be away from Homeworld,” she whispers, “if only for a little. I can’t forget about Arnin, and the Crumberdum elves. Sometimes home is scary and painful, and it’s filled with these scars of the bad things that happened, but that’s why you love it right? They can heal, too. I also don’t want to feel like I’m running away from home.” 

Earth looked over – there was a pile of our heroes’ belongings in the corner, down the side of Dragon’s tongue, which was mostly clothes, but also some dishes, their weapons, and other tools they might need, and stashed somewhere very safe was the book Fyre gave them. Her heart skipped a beat. She looked away with some panic in her eyes and back to the window.

_ I’m not scared of home, it’s something else.  _ The thought grew in her. The corner of the room almost began to torment her. “What did I bring home…” But by now Earth’s speech is a soft whisper and she brushes her wet eyes with her arm. “I’ll tell Creation about it. I think he’ll understand.” And the constant space still looks back at her, like the blackness reaffirmed itself in her eyes like the black splotches when you press on your eyes, like a reminder of how empty space is, and how cold and lonely. Earth folds up her sleeves of her dress and she untangles her hair, and falls back on her back, looking up at the roof of Dragon’s mouth. More tears stream, and she wipes them away and rolls over with her eyes closed now.

Then she hears from the fold in the corner of Dragon’s mouth Fate climbing up to the part where she is sitting, carrying behind them their big soup vat, which she judged from the sound of water swooshing around. 

“Good morning Fate,” she says, not turning around quite yet.

“How you doing, Earth?”

“Do you need a hand with breakfast?” 

“Oh, no, I’ll be fine – but keep it down, Creation’s still catching up on some shut-eye!” Fate said rather loudly. 

And they started breakfast quietly, while Earth remained laying down. And they placed the vat in the back of Dragon’s mouth where it gets warm, where her fiery breath circulates. They filled the vat with the giant green leaves they found on Ossis, and some grains from the bag of grains they got there in trade. They tasted the broth in the vat and added some onion and salt they brought from Homeworld. And slowly the stew’s smell filled the little room and once the water bubbled and the ingredients rolled around on their own, Fate put aside the stirring spoon and joined Earth, at the window, where they waited in the warm soupy steam. They both watched the stars now. 

And Earth once again tried to find that peace she had just before, before it was broken by her memories of Crumberdum and Kipi. She couldn’t – she couldn’t again be absorbed by the calmness of space, not now at least. She struggled also to find that same sense of home in Dragon; what seemed natural and simple just earlier was blurred and confusing, and so she tried to drop it, avoid it, and press it back in her brain, and it fought and sprung desperation in her head, and it carried her down into thought, she thought herself into circles. And in her own lonely head she felt distant from Fate, sitting there right next to her, and distant from home, and she felt distant, and spacey in the cold isolation of her thoughts. 

 

**

 

Later that morning Fate finished cooking their soup, and put it out on Dragon’s tongue in the middle of the central room, and once everyone was awake, they’d eat and chat. This was daily routine. And generally, after breakfast, Creation would read while Earth and Fate chatted more. Sometimes Earth would try to read some of the books Creation brought for the voyage but most were in scripts or languages she couldn’t read, and those that she could dissect were old-fashioned or too dry. A lot she’d just look at the pictures. Sometimes she’d find games to play with Fate and often she’d watch the stars through Dragon’s window (that’s what they called that stretched part of her skin) until she got lost in them, which seemed to kill time fast. Fate preferred it when she hung out with them, they were neither good at being alone nor good at being bored. But they’d run out of things to talk about, and then play games or make up stories, or tell real ones. Sometimes Creation would practice his sword, and Fate and Earth would join in with theirs. And when they first left Ossis with the bag of grains, they spent hours picking out the seeds and pebbles and insects out and throwing them down Dragon’s mouth, but that only provided entertainment for two days. They were in space so long still eventually they’d run out of things to talk about, or things to do. Then they would stare, or rest their eyes, and just do nothing, lying down on Dragon’s tongue. This was most moments on the animal aircraft: silence, and stillness, except for Dragon’s constant breath. Space was still worth it, at least for Earth – seeing always new spreads of stars through Dragon’s window alone made it so she would never regret her voyage to Nidaria. But besides this marvel, space was mostly mundane. 

So Earth was determined to  _ make  _ it fun. Fate on the other hand was more likely to buckle under the pressure of how uneventful everything was. Creation didn’t seem to mind, on the outside. If it ever got to him he just never showed it. 

But now Creation has just rose from his room, where him and Fate both sleep. The room was one of Dragon’s throats that she closed while holding her breath in space. The throat they slept in was one of three (at least that’s all our heroes have found); the central one is large, like a well, with no cover, and it breaths (no one quite understood how, or what, in the airlessness of space) and heated her mouth, and if you hold your hands above it they start to hurt from the heat. The other two were on each side. They used the one on the right for sleeping, only because the left one, the flaps were too tight to squeeze through. The right throat still came with its disadvantages. It was buried in tons of Dragon’s flesh, which is why when Creation announced, “ _ it smells great!”  _ upon waking up and smelling soup, it was muffled. The throat was deep enough for Creation’s feet, and some, before it got too narrow for him to fall down any more, so Fate could see Creation’s limbs flailing around as he struggled to force his large frame through the narrow flaps. The little room was also not very spacious – there was just enough room for Fate and Creation both without stretching the skin and hurting Dragon, placed side-by-side in the little hole. They’d have to sometimes readjust to find space to breath, and when their sleep schedules weren’t aligned it was a problem to not stir the other from sleep when getting in bed or leaving. But Creation and Fate enjoyed each other’s company at night and they accepted these disadvantages for the snugness and security of a night companion. 

Dragon was not big in general – Creation, who was particularly tall anyway, stood up tall enough to climb in her mouth when she sat on the ground. But when she flew, she puffed her cheeks like a bullfrog, and only because of this there was enough room for three people to live in her mouth. The roof of her mouth was tall enough, depending on where you stood on the tongue, which had bends and creases in it, but it was generally tall enough for all to stand, except Creation, who crouched just a little or ducked his head. The clothing pile stood at the back to the left side, where the tongue sloped down towards the unoccupied throat. 

Creation sat down in the front of the vat and sniffed. He had a calm smile.

Fate pulled out the three bowls and served them, and they gathered around the sides of the pot like it was a fire. 

“My specialty:  _ Fate’s Green Stuff and Onion Soup,  _ coming soon to a soup house near you!”

“I can’t wait,” said Earth.  

The light brown broth swirled around in their bowls, the steam rolling off and condensing on their faces almost so it dripped on their chins. The vat had the same broth in it day to day, the broth Fate made after they stopped at Ossis and got water. Every morning Fate cooked greens or grains into this broth, and they tasted the broth and tweaked the flavors. The broth was more than halfway depleted, and when they stopped for a break before hitting Nidaria, they’d hopefully find water and fill the vat, and Fate would make another vat of broth. 

“It’s yummy!” Creation said, and soup was falling out of his mouth back into the bowl.

“Hey, thanks!” 

“Thank  _ you,  _ Fate,” Earth said.

“How did everyone sleep? I slept so well,” Creation said.

“I slept good. I woke up feeling great.” 

“I dreamt about soup,” said Fate.

“Yeah Fate, you’re getting super good at making soup, what’s your secret?”

Fate looked at Earth and contemplated for a second, and then said, “My secret is so  _ cool  _ and  _ complicated  _ that I would never tell you!” 

“Nooo!” Earth yelled.

“Dragon, you want some!” 

Dragon purred. They walked back to her throat and poured the bit left in their bowl down her tongue so it dripped into her throat. Dragon purred.  

“I think the broth dried up before she could even taste it,” Fate giggled. And they threw down their bowl and clapped their hands together and, “so, how many days until Nidaria?”

“You ask that every morning!” Earth yelled. 

Our heroes eat once a day, in the morning. And by the end of that meal our heroes are still hungry and parched. And Earth’s mouth is dry, and it’s in Dragon’s mouth which is dry from her dry heat coming from her throat. But they can’t eat till their hearts content when their food and broth must be rationed to last them until their next stop. Which was who-knows-when, largely depending on when they find a habitable planet. As irresponsible as Fate was at most things, they were good at proportioning food each day and making sure the supply lasted.

“So what are you reading today, Creation?” Earth asked as Fate collected the bowls to wash them. 

“Well, I don’t really know if I feel like reading today but I’ve been working through  _ The Space Frontier _ ”- he said the name of the book in a tongue Earth didn’t know, and then he spoke it in Midibil (Earth knew Midibil, spoken in parts of Mellow, and she knew Pinc from staying in Crumberdum, and bits of Common; the city our heroes live in now, from where they departed on Dragon at the start of this voyage, had representation in many many different tongues, and Creation could interpret between almost all of them-it was unclear just how many languages he knew, but there were many) –“Today I might just watch space, or try to rest my eyes.” 

“What’s the space frontier about?”

“Hm… So far it’s a narrative about space travel in a space dragon. I’ve just begun, but one of the navigators had disobeyed the commander and she was harshly disciplined.”

Earth put her hand on her mouth.

“It was actually written by someone from Agony-Ka, and from their name I think I might be familiar with their lineage from my time there. They share a fourth and fifth name with the enemy commander-witch there, who bested our legion with deceptive magic. But, anywho, I’m gonna go sit by the window."

Creation crawled down there, and Earth fell back on her back, legs crossed, where she was sitting for breakfast. And Fate was pinching pieces of their shirt, focused like a cat. Earth stared up at the roof, and watched the little ripples at the top of Dragon’s mouth. Faces and birds and swords started to form for her, like watching stars back home, and she tried to read the expressions of the faces and the wolf heads that came about the tops where the mouth curved out to meet her teeth. She imagined the wolf howls she could hear when she’d be out at night with Fate or Fyre, and the pale moonlight and the dark etches of bark and shadowy masses of forest all around Fyrestone. And she followed a piece of flesh that protruded a little and wavered but generally set its path across strait the top of her mouth, a mound or dune that stretched and turned at the front where she saw its twin turn the opposite way, and traced that one back, when she thought of something.

“Hey, Fate,” she said quietly, and they looked up and stopped touching their shirt, with their focused face unchanged. “Hey.”

“I had a dream last night, can I tell you about it?”

“Yeah of course! What happened?” 

“Well. It’s kind of hard to describe… But you were there, and there was a snake, and I was worried you were going to get eaten. I was standing through some paneling, like I was looking through a window. Oh and before that I was falling, and I saw you there too I think, and I saw Fyre, and someone with a big white beard. And maybe my horse. And when I landed, I was at Fyrestone. But then I ended up behind that window like I was saying, I don’t know where that was. You were standing in some sort of grass, and there was a road near you, going right and left, like you were in the grass out front of some building on the street. I think it was snowing. You were standing there waving and there was this giant snake that came into view, behind you, but walking along the road. It didn’t see you, and it wasn’t going towards you, but I was scared it was going to and eat you or kill you. So from behind the window I was trying to warn you by yelling, but you kept waving and smiling and you didn’t seem to hear me, and I was screaming, and then I tried to make hand motions, and you stopped and tried to understand them, but then you just kept waving. That’s all I remember. I just remembered it actually, I forgot it when I first woke up I guess.”

“Gosh that sounds scary. I wonder if it’s an omen of things to come,” Fate had an evil look on their face.

“Fate don’t scare me!”

“I’ll be eaten by Nidarian snakes! Aah!! Or space snakes. That’s a fun way to die, compared to drowning. Or starvation.”

Earth frowned. “Well that’s all I wanted to share.”

“Space snakes. I knew it,” they said to themselves.

__ Earth looked back up at the roof, collapsing again to the ground, and Fate scooted back and played with their shirt again.

“Hey, Creation, why you smiling like that?”

Creation looked at Fate for some time. And then spoke: “Oh, well. I like this part of our trip

And this was the peak of activity for their day. Creation stargazed and eventually napped. Earth stared and rested her eyes. Fate did little more than Earth (but a little bit more). Most days passed slowly like this, with so few events it blurred and in the same vein felt really fast. Silence and stillness, barreling through space in Dragon’s mouth, on their way to places much louder and more eventful. Their lives would soon be put on the line, forced through new and unpredictable challenges, at Nidaria, which lays ahead in space’s gloomy path. But now our heroes are lulled to sleep by Dragon’s constant steadfast momentum and her heartbeat and breath; now they rest, preparation for the battle that lies ahead. 


	2. Tobacco

Earth had slept high up on Dragon’s tongue. She woke up to thesmmell of breakfast. She normally woke up before everyone else, (except Dragon, who didn’t sleep while flying) so it was nice to not have to wait around for soup in the morning. She sleepily crawled toward the smell.

Fate was staring into the soup with an uncertain frown. Creation was reading. (He had a book in front of him at least but it was down in his lap and he was, too, staring at the soup.) 

“Soup smells great!”

“Yup! Just this- and this - and the soup is done. Oh, hey Earth!” 

“Morning, Earth!” Creation chimed in.

“You’re up just in time for soup!”

Fate served them (they liked to serve, and for that matter preferred if the cooking was left to them alone so they could perfect their methods) and our heroes feasted – maybe faster than they had before, soon Earth looked up, swallowed urgently, gasped for air, “Fate, it’s amazing!” before returning to her bowl. Creation had a little smile and nodded in agreement. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! It’s very good!” Earth reassured them.

“I put in eggplant in this one.” Fate said solemnly. 

“Yeah? The spices are so nice.”

“This is some of the best soup I’ve had,” added Creation.

“How about the consistency?” 

“Flawless,” confirmed Earth.

And Fate chewed a piece analytically, “Creation, be honest, how do you feel about the eggplant?”

“Impeccable?” broke Creation through his giant gulps.

Fate seemed uncertain, as they spooned a chunk of eggplant from the broth and stared. And they hesitated. And they launched it in, biting, waiting, eyes closed tight and heart pounding, all the while their friends were too busy with the soup to notice, and after a brief hesitation of careful thought, Fate swallowed, looked down at the bowl, and moved their spoon about in little circles. “The eggplant is undercooked. The seasoning flopped, too. I need to start from scratch again. This is no good...”

Creation couldn’t hear them over his own eating, and Earth at first distracted by the soup, looked over at Fate, whose head kept sinking lower and lower as the realization set in. Earth nudged Creation. Fate was consumed by total defeat.

Creation and Earth came to Fate’s side, cheeks stained and soup on their chins and onto their dresses. 

“There, there, Fate, your soup was amazing.” 

“Don’t beat yourself up, it was only the eggplant.”

“I haven’t had soup that good since I… I’ve never had soup that good!”

“You think so?” their voice muffled by their hands they were resting their head on. 

“Of course!”

“Ok, cool. You both can get seconds.”

“Yippee!”

    They both jumped to the pot and refilled their bowls...

 

**

 

Later, Creation did finally get to reading. Fate was chatting with Earth. 

“Have you heard of  _ Tobacco _ ?”

“The plant?”

“The  _ game _ .”

“I love games! Can you teach me?”

“Yeah. I think. I normally played cards back home, its been so long. But I’m pretty sure there were twenty cards – four blue, five black, five red, six purple. But we can use any color as long as they are the right amounts – four, five, five, six – I figure, if you’d like to play, we could use our clothes.”

“Hm. That might work, let’s see what we have.”

The pile of clothes wasn’t too large, for three people, maybe a total of thirty-five or so pieces of clothing. They arranged the leather boots, the dresses, the jackets, the pants – so they had three piles – six browns, five bright colors, five light colors, but they were all out of clothes that matched, so Earth grabbed four underwears. She mixed the clothes together with her hands, and started explaining the rules.

“Colors are valued differently depending on the part of the game, and the status of the board. The person with the most valuable clothes by the end wins. There’s the Free Zone, where untapped clothes can be transferred during your Ending Phase, the Active Zone, which we draw from during the Drawing Phase, and the Hidden Zone, we can deposit into as a free action – oh right, actions cost value, and costs cost value, too. Values have costs. Drawing costs the value of the cost of the clothes, but the clothes  _ real  _ value, that is the value that matters at the end of the game, is the value of this drawing cost plus the value of the clothes. Subsequent draws in one turn cost twice the value of an underwear. Tapping clothes cost the value of a brown piece of clothing, unless its value is changed after the underwears are all drawn. Underwear may not be transferred. Ending Phases are valued a brown clothing, Drawing Phases an underwear, these phases may be cashed in for its value, but only during a transfer, before you  _ transfer _ but after you declare it, so your opponent could, say, start their own transfer, or use untapped underwear – right, untapped underwear may be sacrificed, that is returned to the  _ Real  _ Hidden Zone, to achieve an affect that depends on the board status – specifically, which clothing is most represented.”

“How do we know how much value the clothes have?”

“Oh-simple. That depends on the board status.”

“Oh.”

“Well. Wait no that wouldn’t make sense because the status depends on representation, which is subject to change based on the value during a Drawing Phase when two underwears are active. So the clothing values must depend on… Ah, yes, the representation in the Hidden Zone.”

“The  _ Real  _ Hidden Zone or the Hidden Zone?”

“Uhm…”

“And what happens before there are clothes there?”

“Then… I think after the first turn you put clothes from the Active Zone… Or maybe that’s the rule about having an empty  _ Real  _ Active Zone…”

“Also why’s it called Tobacco?”

“I forget how to play.” She threw the clothes back in with the rest of the pile. 

    “Oh well. Hey Earth what’s that?” Fate said, pointing at the silver ball that rolled out from the clothing pile. Earth froze, with her back to Fate, stopped dead in her tracks at the front of the pile. 

    The silver ball spun around as it settled into a crevice between the bottom of Dragon’s mouth at the side of her tongue and the gum wall. It was shiny and the size of a medium squash, and had waves of black stains like coffee, with a pointed tip and huge irregularities, thick and heavy. Some sort of slick smooth metal, it glided around effortlessly and when it rolled the irregular shape sent it in paths that were large circles, but it wouldn’t finish the circle and spin around and start a new circle with a different trajectory. It almost mimicked life, like a little mouse or rat, like it had a mind of its own. It was wrapped in one of Earth’s dresses, she guessed it must have fallen out when she was moving the clothes around and now for the first time since she found it, it was out in the open. And she was embarrassed now that she didn’t just show it to Fate when she found it, right when she got home from Kipi. She was embarrassed that she was embarrassed that it was out in the open, and Fate saw it.

“Uh, I don’t know.” She was telling the truth but it sounded like a lie. 

“Oh. Just a souvenir I guess?” Fate watched the still profile of her face nervously. 

“Yeah.” 

    She was nervous and quiet. And confused why this little ball had such an impact on her. There was something of an aura surrounding it. It couldn’t let her keep calm, she had to bury it in her dress, out of sight, out of the way, or it tormented her, it had been a constant confusion for her since she found it, until this voyage when she pressed it in the center of the clothes, and tried to forget about it. She truly had no idea  _ what  _ it was, and maybe that’s why she was so afraid of it. It was a mystery, a heart that replaced a person, no explanation; she didn’t know why she took it to begin with, why she couldn’t let it go once she had it, why she constantly thought about it. It was partially that, for sure, there was something magical or mysterious about it. But she couldn’t help but think she was letting it get to her, a petty little gem or ornament, a witch’s token or toy. 

“I’ll… put it away,” she said. She jumped down quickly, scooping up the heart and climbed back up with it, avoiding eye contact with Fate who sat up watching the silver object with mild curiosity. She reached into the pile for that dress and wrapped it up and forced it into the center of the pile. 

    And Fate lost interest and turned around. Earth felt like she dodged a bullet. But she didn’t know why, she wasn’t doing anything wrong by having it with her, at least she thought, and for all she knew it was just a piece of metal, and the bitter worries she had for it were just the scars Kipi left on her memory. For all she knew Kipi was just a dream or some horrible nightmare and that was no replacement of a person at all, but some ironsmith’s mistake that was cast out in the snow. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the little object wasn’t just unfamiliarity, it was evilness, which that object had in itself for her, some remnant of a diabolic past. She feared it like the blade, or like Arnin; she feared it because it lived in those sinister places, the wintery pits of Kipi, the uncharted expanse of her memory that time, or trauma, had shred and tore, whose pieces she struggled to reassemble with any illusion of comfort. Now she is not near Kipi – all that matters is that she fears the dreadful thing.

She felt sweat on her forehead. She still couldn’t look at either of her friends directly. 

_ What did I bring here… it’s not just Kipi I’m afraid of.  _ She was as certain as ever.  _ It’s something else… _


End file.
